Category Archives: polls and surveys

“The language is evolving …”

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

I know that, but I’d still like to know what YOU think about this sentence, which I heard this summer while camping in England: “We are currently having to deal with a large volume of calls and are unable to … Continue reading →

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Hisself: should we allow it or not?

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

And here is another blogpost from one of my MA students. Maha Khalil would like to know why the non-standard reflexive pronoun hisself remains non-standard today. The blogpost was inspired …  … by an article published by the Scottish writer … Continue reading →

Posted in polls and surveys, usage features | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Dialect or simply illiterate?

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Ilse Stolte needs to write blogposts for my course Non-Standard English (and prescriptivism) as well. Here is the first one, and one with a request to our readers to fill in a survey on the acceptability of two stigmatised language … Continue reading →

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How do the Dutch feel about non-standard features of English?

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Michèle Huisman’s first blogpost, and she too is doing a survey for her paper in the course Non-standard English which I’m teaching. So please help her collect data for her upcoming presentation! In 2017, The Netherlands came first … Continue reading →

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Language myths – who cares?

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

I’m reading (partly re-reading) the book Language Myths, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, published in 1998. It includes 21 pieces by well-known linguists such as James and Lesley Milroy, Jenny Cheshire, Dennis Preston, John Algeo (apologies to the … Continue reading →

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Just out: Proper English Usage

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

Lying on my desk since yesterday: Carmen Ebner’s PhD thesis, all shiny and new. It is the first proper book published in our research project. Congratulations, Carmen! And all the best with your defense on 5 September. You’ll do us … Continue reading →

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Grammar Badgers

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

A few weeks ago, I gave a guest lecture through Skype for students at the University of Wisconsin. Interesting experience, and fantastic students they were. Their teacher, Anja Wanner, told me they were busy preparing an outreach project (obligatory at … Continue reading →

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What kind/sort/type of word are these? Number concord across the species noun phrase in International Academic English

Posted on December 6, 2016 by adrianstenton

I’m Adrian Stenton, and I’m a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, where I’m investigating number concord across the species noun phrase, as part of the project Bridging the Unbridgeable: a project on English usage guides, which … Continue reading →

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Your Top 5 of grammatical errors in English?

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Hielke Vriesendorp is a research master student of Linguistics at Leiden, who is trying to collect data for his paper for Ingrid Tieken’s MA course Testing Prescriptivism. To this end, he compiled a brief survey asking about people’s Top 5s of most … Continue reading →

Posted in news, polls and surveys | Tagged | 6 Comments

Our latest interactive feature in English Today: Usage advice online

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Morana Lukač

When in doubt about questions of usage, I do as I suppose most other people do as well: I google it. That is only, however, the starting point of most internet searches. What I wanted to find out when I … Continue reading →

Posted in announcement, polls and surveys, technology | Tagged | 2 Comments